Chromoionophoric Recognition of Alkylamines by Nitro Derivative

The molecular design of efficient and selective chromogenic and fluorogenic ionophore systems for the sensing of chemically and biologically important ionic guests has attracted much attention in the past decade. Many of the compounds are based on the well-known molecular framework of crown ethers, calixarenes, and other EDTA type efficient chelating compounds. Among them the calix[4]arenes are particularly attractive for their selective ionophoric properties toward many of interesting organic ammonium guests. Particularly, the calix[4]arene-crown ethers are known to have unique binding properties toward some of alkali, alkaline earth metal ions, and biogenic amines. Many of the chromogenic sensing materials are developed by conjugating molecular framework of calix[4]- arene-crown ethers with suitable signaling functions of azophenols, thiazoles, and indophenols. Quite unexpectedly, however, the ionophoric properties of simple nitro derivative of calix[4]arene-crown ethers were not reported, except for the closely related structure having ester-ether functions in crown moiety, in spite of their synthetically easy availability and expectedly efficient ionophoric properties toward organic amine guests. In this paper, we report the ionophoric properties of dinitro derivative of calix[4]arene-crown-5 ether 1 toward representative alkylammonium ions aiming for the development of efficient and selective chromogenic sensing material for the biologically important organic amine guests. The Ba2+-selective chromogenic behavior of 1 over the representative alkali and alkaline earth metal ions has been reported earlier.